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<h2>
<b><font color="#990000">SECURITY</font></b></h2>
<font color="#000000">In default mode Grid Engine is installed without
any additional security measures.&nbsp; The assumption is made that the
Grid Engine cluster is not exposed to any malicious attacks.</font>
<br><font color="#000000">The hosts that belong to the Grid Engine cluster
are classified into four categories, where a host can belong to more than
one of them:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">master host</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">Here run the Grid Engine master daemon sge_qmaster
and the scheduler sge_schedd.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">execution hosts</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">Here run the Grid Engine execution daemons sge_execd.
These nodes are allowed to execute Grid Engine jobs.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">administrative hosts</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">Administrative tasks like the granting of permissions
and the maintenance of resources are only allowed from these hosts.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">submit hosts</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">Submit hosts allow for submitting and controlling
batch jobs.</font></ul>
<font color="#000000">Apart from the host based access restrictions the
users are classified into the categories:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">managers</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">They have full capabilities to manipulate Grid
Engine.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">operators</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">They can perform the same commands as managers
apart from adding/deleting/modifying queues.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">owners</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">They can suspend/unsuspend or enable/disable
the queues they are registered as owners.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">users</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">They must have a valid login on at least one
submit and one execution host. Their access can be limited to a subset
of them by installing access lists.</font></ul>
<font color="#000000">These mechanisms rely on the assumption that the
user is who he claims to be and the host is the host that it claims to
be and that this information can be trusted.</font>
<br><font color="#000000">To enhance the security standard there exist
currently three approaches:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000"><a href="#Enhanced Security Using Reserved Ports">Grid
Engine using reserved ports</a></font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000"><a href="#Enhanced Security Using Kerberos/DCE Authentication">Grid
Engine version using Kerberos/DCE authentication</a></font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000"><a href="#Enhanced Security Using Kerberos">Grid
Engine version using Kerberos</a></font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000"><a href="#Enhanced Security Using OpenSSL">Grid Engine
version using SSL&nbsp; (work in progress)</a></font></li>
</ul>
<a NAME="Enhanced Security Using Reserved Ports"></a><font color="#990000">Enhanced
Security Using Reserved Ports</font>
<p><font color="#000000">The simplest security mechanism is the communication
between Grid Engine components over reserved ports. So any client who is
not communicating</font>
<br><font color="#000000">from a priviledged port number is rejected. The
mechanism used is very similar to the authentication mechanism known from
the rsh/rlogin command suite.</font>
<br><font color="#000000">To make use of this security mechanism the following
steps are necessary:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">the shared Grid Engine installation directory must
be exported setuid root</font></li>
</ul>

<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">the installation is performed as root with './install_qmaster
-resport' for qmaster and './install_execd -resport' for execd</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">The client binaries are installed setuid root
to be able to connect to Grid Engine from reserved ports.</font>
<br>&nbsp;
<li>
<font color="#000000">if you are setting up a system with shared libraries,
the libraries must be copied to a 'safe' place. The dynamic loader requires
in general that</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">the libraries are installed under /usr/lib or
some other trusted system path.</font></ul>
<font color="#000000">What can you expect ?</font>
<p><font color="#000000">The communication over reserved ports assures
that only messages that are send from a port in the range 0-1023 are accepted.
This means that only</font>
<br><font color="#000000">a program that has been setuid root can send
such messages. So it can be assured that the client programs you are using
are the ones that have been</font>
<br><font color="#000000">installed by the Grid Engine administrator.</font>
<br><font color="#000000">This implies that the following criteria must
be valid:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">there is no possibility to replace a host in the
network by another machine e.g. a Linux laptop where the intruder can install
its</font></li>

<br><font color="#000000">own version of Grid Engine binaries and setuid
root them.</font>
<li>
<font color="#000000">the Grid Engine executables/libraries should not
be replaceable by someone else than root (this must be checked during installation)</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">all hosts where root access can be gained are trusted</font></li>
</ul>
<font color="#000000">Here are the steps that are performed by a Grid Engine
command as qsub using reserved ports:</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font color="#000000">qsub is started as setuid root program</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">qsub changes its effective user id to the users id
after starting</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">client specific processing is executed and a message
for qmaster is prepared</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">change the effective user id to root and get a socket
file descriptor in the priviledged port space, change back to the user's
id</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">send the message to qmaster using the file descriptor
in the priviledged port space</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">qmaster receives the message, if it has not been
send from the priviledged port space it will be rejected</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">check the standard Grid Engine host and user permissions
and allow or reject the request</font></li>

<li>
<font color="#000000">qmaster processes the request and sends back any
answers</font></li>
</ul>
<font color="#000000">This applies to any other client command.</font>
<p><a NAME="Enhanced Security Using Kerberos/DCE Authentication"></a><font color="#990000">Enhanced
Security Using Kerberos/DCE Authentication</font>
<p>This GSS-API Kerberos implementation has used regularly in Grid Engine 5.3
development and test environments and is used full-time at least one production
site which is running Grid Engine 5.3.  This
implementation is different than the
<font color="#990000">Enhanced Security Using Kerberos</font>
implementation described below in that it is not a full Kerberos implementation
but uses Kerberos to authenticate users submitting jobs and to forward user
credentials with the job by calling security sub-programs at the appropriate times.
This implementation does not require recompiling Grid Engine.  It consists of security
modules which can be compiled separately and are called by Grid Engine to do
authentication and to forward the Kerberos credentials.  The security sub-modules
are called by client commands (e.g. qsub) and by the Grid Engine daemons
(sge_qmaster, sge_execd) at the appropriate times to get and store credentials.
The Kerberos modules are used by Grid Engine when it is running in Kerberos mode
(i.e. For GE 5.3, the $SGE_ROOT/default/common/product_mode file contains the
string "sgeee-kerberos" or "sge-kerberos").  The source code for this implementation
is located in the directory gridengine/source/security/gss.  The source code is
not dependent on other Grid Engine components or libraries and can be compiled
stand-alone.  Details on how to use this implementation can be found in
gridengine/source/security/gss/doc/gss_customer.html.
<p>Before you start digging into this, make sure how Kerberos/DCE functions
in general. There are many good sites out there in Netland.
<br><font color="#000000">Grid Engine can be run in a Kerberos/DCE environment
using the corresponding authentication mechanisms. A detailed description
how to integrate Grid Engine in such an enviroment can be found <a href="gss/doc/gss.html">here</a>.</font>

<p><a NAME="Enhanced Security Using Kerberos"></a><font color="#990000">Enhanced
Security Using Kerberos</font>

<p>This implementation isn't really usable in its current form. This code was
developed around 1997
for a Raytheon customer which required Kerberos security at their site. This was a
full Kerberos implementation which used the Kerberos libraries for all communication
between the daemons and clients. However, the code was never put into production
and has not been used at any production sites. It was not fully tested and it has
not been kept up-to-date with the many changes that have been put into Grid Engine
since that time. The Kerberos support compiled into Grid Engine should be considered
experimental.  There were several reasons for not finishing this implementation
(e.g. time and money), but the main reason was the impracticality of supporting
this version as a product back then (long before Grid Engine was open source)
because of export restrictions on Kerberos itself and other practical considerations.
At that time, allowing the customer to compile the code on his own was simply not an
option, because we didn't supply the source code to customers.
<p>
If you need Kerberos to authenticate users who are submitting jobs to allow Grid
Engine jobs to run with Kerberos credentials (which have been forwarded and are
protected by encryption), then the 
<font color="#990000">Enhanced Security Using Kerberos/DCE Authentication</font>
implementation is the way to
go.  Full authentication and encrypted communication via Kerberos between all
Grid Engine clients (e.g. qmon, qstat) and deamons would require using the
Kerberos code in security/krb, but sure this would involve a significant
amount of further testing and development. A description of the integration
and a setup example can be found in the following documents:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="krb/doc/ReleaseNotes.html">Release Notes</a></li>

<li>
<a href="krb/doc/Implementation.html">Implementation</a></li>
</ul>

<p><a NAME="Enhanced Security Using OpenSSL"></a><font color="#990000">Enhanced
Security Using SSL</font>
<p><font color="#000000">A prototype of Grid Engine supporting SSL has
been developed in the context of a diploma thesis. Although the original
work is a bit outdated and needs adaption to the newest SSL libraries,
it is certainly a good starting point. The original diploma thesis (in
german) outlining the architecture of this security approach can be found
<a href="sec/doc/diplomarbeit.ps">here.</a>
<p>The Certificate Security Protocol has been reworked and a description 
how to deploy this version can be found <a href="sec/csp.html">here</a>
</font>
<center>
<p>Copyright 2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.</center>

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